A little way farther on they came across a group of women bending over another woman who lay on the ground in the curve of a stone wall. Granny hesitated, and then drew rein. “Is the poor critter sick?” she called to them. “Can I help? Perhaps we could make a place for her.” A tall woman in a gray shawl straightened up. “No, thank’ee, Ma’am,” she called crisply. “It’s only Aunt Hannah. She wheezes so with the asmaticks, her noise would give us away to the British. We’re going to cover her over with leaves and let her rest, all snug and out of sight, here by the wall.” At that Nancy Davis began to laugh. She laughed and laughed, and then she began to cry. Gran slapped her face hard and drove on. “None o’ that foolishness, Nance,” she said severely. “Mind your children. ’Bijah would expect you to. Kitty and Sally Rose”--she lifted her voice--“is all well with you back there?” “Let’s not go any farther, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose. “There are lights at the inn we just passed by. If the folks haven’t run away, maybe they’ll have beds for us. Maybe if we hide in bed, the British will ride on and never know we’re there. I don’t want to go to Haverhill, Gran.” “When I say you’ll go to Haverhill, to Haverhill you’ll go,” said Gran, and drove on into the night. “I hope I can make the ferry in time.” Kitty sensed the note of anxiety in Gran’s voice, and that frightened her more than anything that had gone before it. Not when the smallpox struck and folk lay dying in every house in town, not when a great tree crashed through the roof in the midst of an autumn storm, had she known Gran to feel afraid. She looked over her shoulder again, and then around her at the dark fields, the thickets here and there along the road. Frightened women had come this way in other times, she knew, when Indians with tomahawks lurked behind every tree. She had heard, too, of the dreadful times at Salem that Nancy spoke about, when the devil had walked abroad in Essex County, or folk thought that he had, though they never saw the devil. The most terrible fear, she thought, is the fear of an unseen thing. A British Army marching toward them with drums and banners and bayonets would not be so terrible as the shadows that might hold any nameless menace, the shadows drawing closer in.... She turned to Sally Rose, but Sally Rose was humming a little tune. There was boredom rather than terror in her hazel eyes. Sally Rose had found one redcoat to be a gallant and handsome lover, so she believed they would all be that. But Kitty had heard tales of their cruelty to Boston folk. She remembered that blood had been shed at Concord Fight and on Lexington Green. She crouched on the turnip sack and shivered with cold fear. Somehow the road seemed to be less crowded now. No one had passed them for half an hour. Then they met a little group of horsemen slowly riding back. Granny hailed them.